Feeling the pinch

The housewives of Japan are giving less spending money to their husbands

MEASURING pocket money for adults is one of the quirkier ways of testing the economic life of a nation. In Japan, where housewives traditionally control their husbands’ wages and return a small proportion for daily expenses, they’ve been measuring it for 30 years. The latest survey of the kozukai, or allowance, makes grim, if fascinating, reading.

Unsurprisingly, the allowance peaked in 1990 at nearly 78,000 yen per month ($1,000 in today’s money) at almost exactly the moment Japan’s economic star began its slow descent. The figure has plummeted to half that sum this year, roughly back to what it was in 1981, according to Shinsei Bank, which compiles the annual white paper. That shrinking budget has forced a pruning of non-essentials: gone are golf games, eating out, boozing and the tipsy taxi-ride home. The average amount spent on the once ubiquitous drinking session has declined by more than half, to 2,860 yen ($37) in the decade to 2012—the lowest since the survey started in 1979.

Roughly a fifth of the people polled now bring a flask and food to work to save money, and the average time spent on lunch has shrunk from a far-from-leisurely 33 minutes to an indigestion-inducing 19 minutes over the same period.

One of the few bright spots is the relative affluence of the 20-something salaryman, who now holds around 15,000 yen more pocket money per month than his struggling middle-aged colleague. But that, too, points to an ominous trend. Youngsters have more cash partly because they’re delaying marriage and children, put off by the expense, says marketing expert Ryujin Nishikawa. That’s one reason for Japan’s worrying demography. A recent government survey says the population is set to shrink by a third in the next 50 years.

Mr Nishikawa called the data a mirror of Japanese society over the past generation; “We’re back in the 1980s.” His presentation at a press conference on September 24th was entitled “The tragic story of the salaryman during the Heisei era”, the current imperial reign, which began in 1989. “It’s extremely sad: more people are living alone, eating alone and working too hard.” Still, he says, Japan’s workers are not doing badly compared to Americans and Europeans. “We’re still comparatively well off,” he says.